strictly held. The village tree of the German races was originally a
tribal tree, with whose existence the life of the village was involved;
and when we read of Christian saints and confessors, that they made a
point of cutting down these half idols, we cannot wonder at the rage
they called forth, nor that they often paid the penalty of their
courage."

Similarly we can understand the veneration bestowed on the forest tree
from associations of this kind. Consequently, as it has been remarked,[13]
"At a time when rude beginnings were all that were of the builder's art,
the human mind must have been roused to a higher devotion by the sight
of lofty trees under an open sky, than it could feel inside the stunted
structures reared by unskilled hands. When long afterwards the
architecture peculiar to the Teutonic reached its perfection, did it not
in its boldest creations still aim at reproducing the soaring trees of
the forest? Would not the abortion of miserably carved or chiselled
images lag far behind the form of the god which the youthful imagination
of antiquity pictured to itself throned on the bowery summit of a
sacred tree."

It has been asked whether the idea of the Yggdrasil and the tree-descent
may not be connected with the "tree of life" of Genesis. Without,
however, entering into a discussion on this complex point, it is worthy
of note that in several of the primitive mythologies we find distinct
counterparts of the biblical account of the tree of life; and it seems
quite possible that these corrupt forms of the Mosaic history of
creation may, in a measure, have suggested the conception of the world
tree, and the descent of mankind from a tree. On this subject the late
Mr. R.J. King[14] has given us the following interesting remarks in his
paper on "Sacred Trees and Flowers":